The minds of dogs are fascinating, not only because it's so hard to figure out what they are thinking, but also because they surprise us with unexpected displays of complex mental activity. Piper did just that two nights ago.Sometimes in the evening we give her a rawhide bone. The ones we have are about a foot long, no knobs on the end, and our custom has been to take them away from her either when the bone is half gone it or when it's nine o'clock, whichever comes first. Piper does not like to give up her chew toys. She's never mean about it – just tries to hide or to hang onto them for dear life. Usually we end up having to pry the rawhide from her mouth, something which I really don't like to do, because I know how much she likes her rawhide.
Tuesday evening the clock was approaching nine – both the clock on the wall and Piper's internal clock. At about 8:45 Mary noticed the clock, and said, half-joking, "Wouldn't it be great if she knew it was time to stop chewing, and brought us the bone?" A few minutes later, Piper got up, rawhide firmly ensconced in her teeth, and sneaked around our recliner and underneath an end table, where she often hides to avoid having her prize taken away. It was interesting to the two of us, who were sitting on either side of the end table, that she wasn't chewing on it – just lying there with the rawhide.
At about five minutes before nine, she suddenly pulled out from behind the table and sat up, leaving the rawhide on the floor. She looked at us, as if to say, "OK, go ahead and take it now," which we did. All three of us then resumed our normal evening routine.
We were both stunned by what she had done, first, because it was an entirely new behavior, and second, because it displayed an intelligence on her part which somehow overrode her instinctual desire to hang onto important things, and third, because we had just been joking about just this very behavior. We still don't know for sure what is going on in that pretty head of hers, but what we do know is that there is a lot more happening there than we thought.
On the other side of the ledger, Piper has become a diggin' fool lately, scouring out little holes here and there. That, we hear, is a tough habit to break. But now that she is smarter than we thought, we feel a little more confident about it (though not much!).
Update on this post: A week later the bone was being seriously chewed, as usual, and when we went to take it from her, she growled at us. We did end up taking the bone from her, and we learned that she is all bark and no bite - true to her Golden genes, thankfully!
